


May Such Abundance Visit Your Heart

by splash_the_cat



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Jupiter Ascending Fic Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is never going to get old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May Such Abundance Visit Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> for the http://fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com/ birthday challenge. Unbetaed.

_“Or it may be that the honey in the cells_  
has foamed to froth, has risen above  
walls that could no longer contain  
that sweet— So the hand that tried  
to stay the overflow withdrew, gold-  
sheathed. May such abundance visit  
your heart today: not rue, not pity.”  
― Luisa A. Igloria 

Hay dust and bees swirl overhead, languid, lazy spirals in the late summer heat, glittering like little galaxies where the sun shines through the cracks in the barn's roof. Sprawled against Caine, sweat-slicked and sticky and utterly content, Jupiter lifts one hand, idly tracing her finger in a slow, gentle circle - a few of the bees break off to whirl around it. "This is never going to get old."

Caine huffs a laugh she can feel vibrate through right her skin, and she drops her hand to splay her fingers over his heart, relaxing into the the solid steady thrumming. "It's only been a few months," he says, covering her hand with his, pressing it against his chest. "You haven't even left Earth again. You may yet find delights to eclipse this."

"Nope," Jupiter says before mouthing along the curve of his jaw. "Nothing is going to be better than this. Ever."

A soft brush of feathers flutters down her side and hip as Caine shifts, curling his wings around her before tipping her onto her back and setting his teeth to the quickening pulse at her throat. She's just about to drag him all the way onto her when "Bad Blood" (that's the last time she lets Mikka borrow her phone) blares through the humid air. 

"UGH." Jupiter thuds her head back against the blanket spread across the hayloft floor. "Shit. I forgot to call home."

"You have been distracted." Caine licks at the tiny welts he'd pressed into her skin.

"Shut up, that's all your fault." She shoves at him ineffectually and he eventually relents, letting her push him over so she can crawl free and find her pants. Dragging them onto the blanket she fumbles her phone from the pocket and thumbs in her passcode.

"Oh."

"What is it?"

When she doesn't reply he tugs at her wrist to peer at the series of text messages himself. "Wait. It was your birthday? When?"

"Um, like three days ago?" Jupiter shrugs. "I kinda forgot. I've been a little distracted, remember," she mutters way too defensively for her liking at his incredulous look, and texts Nino and her mother back, trying to remember her increasingly-convoluted web of reasons and excuses for her absences. "I'll have to go home for a while tomorrow, or my mother's going to hire somebody to hunt me down."

"That might be a fun challenge," Caine muses, ducking when Jupiter flings her pants at his head. "I'll go with you, if you'd like."

"Really? Are you sure? It was only my mother and Nino last time. I don't think I can protect you from the full Bolotnikov experience this go. Birthdays get pretty raucus."

Caine rolls his eyes. Jupiter adores that no matter how deferential he was in public, he has no qualms about sassing her when it's just the two of them. "Please. I can't even remember how many bar fights I've had to haul Stinger out of. I think I'll survive."

Vastly entertained by that picture, Jupiter sets her phone out of the way before flopping down again, pillowing her head on Caine's stomach. "What about you? When's your birthday?"

He's silent for so long she doesn't think he's going to answer and she wracks her brain for someway to un-awkward the moment. His voice is quiet and a little unsteady when he finally does speak. "Most splices bred for specific tasks, like the military, aren't born, precisely. My splicer used replicating vats. Easier quality control, much greater yield than biological births. I don't know when exactly I was decanted. It wasn't a thing we thought about."

"Decant... That's..." Jupiter bites back the "gross," "horrifying," and "totally screwed up" that crowd up behind her teeth, because she's guessed he knew this would upset her - that's why he hesitated - and lets out a simple, "really sad."

Caine shrugs. "It's what it is. Kiza was born, true-born, though. Stinger never talked about it, but from what I've heard around, he had someone and they petitioned for a breeding permit."

Breeding permits. Jeez... "What happened?"

"Dunno. She was gone before I met Stinger. He never talked about her. Kiza either. And I didn't want to pry."

Jupiter lets the slow stroke of Caine's fingers up and down her spine draw her mind away from the dizzying circles it's spinning as she tries to process all the implications behind what he's just told her, and how it fits into the terrible inheritance she's been granted. She can't approach it in scale - its just too big; she's going to have to break it out, piece by piece, dreadful truth by dreadful truth. 

She's drifting a little, warm and somewhat eased, when he says, "I wish I'd known. About your birthday. I'd have done... something."

"Caine, it's fine." 

"It's not. A queen," he pronounces with exaggerated but utterly sincere solemnity, "should be celebrated."

"I'd like to point out that you've been celebrating me pretty much every day since you got back from getting these, dude." She gently tugs at a feather on his wing, and he just grins. 

"I haven't heard any complaints, your majesty."

She pinches his belly, earning an undignified, indignant yelp. "After everything that's happened, I feel like I have..." she sucks in a little breath, picturing a young Caine, created for death and war, Kiza and Stinger and what they must have lost. "I mean I have so much," she waves a hand broadly through the air, scattering the twinkling dust and bees. "My planet. And my family. Stinger and Kiza. Flying boots," she says just to needle him even as she leans in and presses a soothing kiss where she'd pinched, then more up along his chest - a long, slow meander to his mouth. "You. I don't need anything else."

And she doesn't need more, she thinks, as Caine winds his fingers through her hair and gently bites her chin before licking his way into her mouth. She has so much now, and yes, and some of it really going to suck down the road, because she's not naive enough to think she can avoid dealing with Seraphi's legacy for much longer, but...

But.

She breaks away, inspiration momentarily overwhelming desire. "But _you_ do."

"What?" 

"You." Jupiter smiles, gleeful. "You need a birthday." 

He blinks, befuddled. "Jupiter, I appreciate the sentime-" 

She claps a hand over his mouth. "Royal decree, Caine. If I deserve such celebration, then so do you."

Caine nips her fingers and then laces his through hers when she snatches her hand away from his teeth. "Your majesty is generous, but ridiculous." The soft smile that plays across his face takes any sting from his words, but Jupiter isn't having any of it.

She sits up and crosses her arms. "Are you denying your queen her wish, Mr. Wise?"

"Fine." He rolls up to his knees and plucks her phone up. He types in her passcode before she can tell him what it is and quirks a grin at her exasperated, "Hey!"

Jupiter cranes her neck to see that he's pulled up her calendar, scrolling back through it, brow furrowed, clearly working through converting whatever galactic calendar space people use to Gregorian, before nimbly adding an event to the app. "There," he says, handing her the phone.

It's a date a month or so before they'd met.

"That was the day Titus pulled me out of the Deadlands," he says before she can ask. "Seemed appropriate."

"Oh. _Oh_..." He's ducked his head, the tips of his suddenly flushed pink, and Jupiter can't help but kiss one. "That's kind of a big milestone birthday. I should get you something."

"I have Stinger back, and Kiza. My wings," and once again they flutter around her, pulling her against him. "You. My queen. My _queen_. How could I need anything else?"

It's a rhetorical question, thankfully, because if she says anything right now, she's going to probably cry, or ask him to marry her or something else equally awkward, so instead she kisses him, and kisses him again until her heart is no longer thundering in her ears.

"I'll make you a cake," she finally offers, when she thinks she can speak without disaster.

"You told me you can't cook," he replies into her hair, and oh, the fondness in his tone, the utterly steadfast devotion...

"So it will be a terrible cake." Jupiter hiccups a watery laugh and buries her face against his shoulder, clinging to him as he noses behind her ear, the whuff of his breath as he breaths in her scent sending shivers all through her. 

Never ever _ever_ going to get old, she thinks, because with Caine wrapped around her, the setting sun warming her skin and the hum of the bees above her, the universe just can't compete.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] May Such Abundance Visit Your Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8911258) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [splash_the_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat)




End file.
